Gift for the Solitary Flower
by darkbeetlebot
Summary: Yuuka is lonely these days and can't make any friends because she's just too scary. This is going to change soon, however. A rather rather poetic story that hopes to be heartbreaking in parts, but heartwarming in others.
1. Intro

Gensokyo is such a peaceful place in a world that is most chaotic, yet it still has its own kind of the latter. One incident after another, it's a repetitive loop that seems to have no exceptions. Through the eyes of the seemingly ageless, the loop is torturous and, ironically, those ageless seem to be common in this fantastical world. Though it repeats, each experience is new and unique. It grants a release from the boredom of existing without a clear end in sight; most simply give up the thought of continuing their lives in exchange for interest and new memories. In that way, the Youkai of this land still have humanity, and vice-versa.

So why is it that they hate each other? To share a common existence, but to deny tranquility and coexistence even through clearly dual strife seems illogical. Still, of these resentful emotions can raise friendship. Few are willing to forget prejudice to achieve such a state and would rather stay as their kin have been.

And then there are the…different…ones, those who are already dead but still live as a mere husk of their previous nature. These are the beings called either "great" or "petty," such a similarity between extremes being of negligible importance. It is still the same, and always will be until changed by an outside influence.

In this fantastical world of Gensokyo is a flower that resides in a field of its own creation, its own beauty, and its own sorrow; its own hatred and denial. The past has left it alone and sour. And so do the passersby ask, "Why do they droop, but never truly die?" and "How are they all one?" The only one there to answer their questions stands in an illusory path. The only sound they give is a sigh, standing in silence and lost in their own tranquility of solitude.

It is a lie. None come this way any longer, and the questions this being wishes to hear and answer are imagination, just as the land is and just as their happiness. Content is no longer a factor, it is a goal; an impossible goal.

Yuuka Kazami, a name that is feared no matter who utters it. What, really, is the weight of the fear? Is its origin only in the past or is it of reasons untold from the perspective of the opposition? "Flower Master of the Four Seasons," is it not a threatening yet prestigious title? There are so many questions and none of them are answered so far. It's just a never-ending game of standing idly to ponder.

"Memories of those who lived in the past,

Recollections for the dead and gone,

Portrayals for the existences of the present,

And hopes and expectances for the future life,

This world around us grows life that blossoms in the sun and dies in the darkness,

Like the flowers in this phantasmal garden, they grow

If they are the flowers that cover this land, it might as well be barren,

Except that either way, it is,

Whether they live or die, all that is left is a wistful nothing,

I'd like to see the world covered in sunflowers,

A field of happy souls devoid of spider lilies,

And I will make it so, for a beautiful fragrance, and for a gorgeous appearance

Not even will the darkness stop it,

The light of the moon still shines upon these numerous petals,

Not even will raging fire destroy it,

The rain and clouds will send torrents to cleanse it,

The worldly garden will still spread so,

Its glory witnessed in full

Even so, even if the world is filled with the mark of the dead,

Emptiness is still persistent,

For even in this Gensokyo,

The Gensokyo where fantasy may become reality and the latter has no meaning,

There is still loneliness

This flower stands solitarily,

For the others fear its greatness,

Company has never been so exclusive,

Where it never dies, but never takes,

Truly longing and truly depressing is the flower standing alone,

In the center of an illusionary crowd"

-Yuuka Kazami,

The Everlasting Sunflower is finally dead,

And it has gone unnoticed


	2. CH 1

"These flowers smell different today…could it be that little thing running around here?" Yuuka asks herself, bending over to sniff one of the numerous sunflowers that fill the field. "What does she want?" She asks herself. At that moment, she glances back less than a second after noticing a slight rustling. Yuuka frowns frustratedly and proceeds towards the noise with intimidating poise and apparent stature. "**Come out**." She demands of the intruder.

She waits a moment and eventually, a small figure peeks out from in front of Yuuka. This small figure is simply a young girl, not even half of Yuuka's size, with two tiny stubs for horns sticking out of her blonde-haired head. She is wearing next to nothing besides a worn out cloth tunic. The little girl surprisingly doesn't look to be afraid, which somewhat confuses Yuuka. She looks down at the girl and asks her in a now calm voice, "Why do you disturb me?"

"I just wanted to…" The girl starts out, hesitating. She completely pauses seconds later and looks away, about to try and run.

Yuuka points her parasol at the girl, "Don't run; what is your name?"

"Ta-Takara…" she answers.

"Surname?" Yuuka asks.

"Wakahisa." The girl finishes.

"Ta-karawa-kahi-sa?" Yuuka says in one long string, grinning and chuckling unexpectedly playfully. Takara also smiles, not sure what to think. Yuuka lowers her umbrella. "**You should go**." She suddenly suggests, losing her grin. Again, Takara hesitates. She backs away a few steps, but doesn't seem to know where to go. Yuuka sighs and offers, "Should I lead you out?" The girl slowly nods and comes closer. Yuuka raises her eyebrow a bit to the strangely brave or oblivious girl's actions. If that is not odd enough, Takara then attempts to hold Yuuka's hand. She backs up and pulls her hand away, staring oddly at the girl.

"What's wrong?" The little youkai asks.

Yuuka shakes her head and regains composure, "Nothing. Nothing at all;" she then asks "come, where do you live?" Takara does not answer; she just hesitates while pointing in several directions. "You don't know?" Yuuka wonders.

"N-No…" Takara admits.

"What, even, are you? Are you an oni?" Yuuka asks her while beginning to circle around while twirling her pale pink parasol.

"I don't know…" Takara also admits.

Yuuka frowns, dissatisfied and turns away from the girl to continue walking through the field. She beckons Takara to follow her with one hand. The girl does so.

They walk for a while, seemingly with no aim before Yuuka spies an object in the distance. "Stop." She tells the little girl. Yuuka closes her parasol and points it at the object that is beginning to rapidly grow in size, a strange ball of light forms at the end of the parasol.

They hear a feminine voice screaming loudly and aggressively, "YOUKAI SCUUUU-!" just as the figure in the distance comes dangerously close but too fast to be recognizable.

Yuuka interrupts the screaming with a rather soft yet solid whisper, "**Grand Spark.**"

The light ball at the end of her parasol instantly fires off a giant beam of bright, multi-colored, slowly changing light that looks more like a huge circular wall from behind. The beam cuts strait through the incoming figure and the far out landscape, disintegrating the background in front of Yuuka. Just a few meters away lies the charred figure that had charged at them, an odd looking shrine maiden holding a stick with a piece of paper on top.

Yuuka decides to talk down to the thing, "You probably noticed that my spark stung quite a bit more than the witch's puny thing. You should know better than to pick fights with people stronger than you, shrine maiden. Maybe take a tip from red-and-white. After all, green and red do complement each other quite well. I would know, you know?" She ends with a grin. However, it's not over yet, Yuuka walk over the maiden's body and stomps on her chest with an immense strength.

The charred girl coughs when stepped on and manages to groan, "So you're just as terrifying as they said you were…"

This strikes a nerve, as Yuuka instantly loose her smile and instead gains a surprised expression with a slightly open mouth that, over a few seconds, turns to a grit of teeth. She raises an eyebrow and increases the pressure on the charred girl's chest before using that same strength to let go and punt her into the field's frenzy of sunflowers.

Yuuka calms down after a moment and turns back to Takara, who is sitting behind where Yuuka was standing a minute ago, and appears to be _trembling in terror._ Yuuka re-opens her parasol and proceeds towards the girl, outstretching her hand. No use, she just crawls backwards.

"W-Why did you do that?" Takara asks in her firghtened voice.

"That was an enemy. Take my hand, now." Yuuka explains rather calmly. Takara slowly stands back up on her own and comes closer to Yuuka. "That's better..." She cheerily says.

The two proceed to walk away from the scene for another few minutes before Yuuka decides to start talking, "Do you know what this place is?"

"No." Takara answers, visibly curious.

"This is the garden of the sun, my home." Yuuka explains. "It is a favorite place for the many youkai of this land..."

"Where did they go?" Takara asks with uptalk.

Yuuka stops in place for a second, then answers, "Stronger people came and scared them off. It has become rather quiet..." She continues walking seconds later.

"Stronger people?" Takara continues to question.

"Yes," Yuuka confirms "like shrine maidens."

"Was that girl from earlier one?" Takara asks.

Yuuka sighs, "Yes, she was. One that is quite a nuisance, in fact."

Takara stays silent for a moment, then latches on to Yuuka's dress, "So...she'll...hurt me?"

Yuuka stops and looks down at her with a slight blush and smile, then turns away and grins widely before pulling it back, "Yes." she bluntly answers.

Takara cluches on tighter and asks, "You won't let her, right?"

"Maybe I will...or will I not?" Yuuka vaguely answers. Takara doesn't appreciate the vague teasing and wines mildly.

They keep on for even longer before Takara finally asks, "Where are we going?"

Yuuka points out into the distance at a silhouette of what appears to be a rather large house. "There. We're not far."

"Is that your...?" Takara starts to ask.

"Yes. You're not the first to see it." Yuuka smiles and comments. "Let's go."

As the two get closer, the mansion appears to be made more and more of foliage and vines and other plants. The entire building itself appears to be made of trees. There also happens to be a giant sunflower sprouting through the middle of it. Aside from the plants, the architecture of the house looks rather Ottonian, but with a bit of Romanesque style to it. The outside is mostly red and white, much like Yuuka's dress.

"This is it." She announces after reaching the entrance to the odd mansion; a rather large double door with large circular holes instead of windows. Most of the house's windows happen to be holes instead of glass. Yuuka happens to be standing atop an elevated porch and looking down towards Takara. "Come up and in, look around." Yuuka offers.

"Y-Yes…" Takara says hesitantly; she's still a bit shaken by the threatening feeling that Yuuka gives off. She steps up and follows Yuuka into the home, then is greeted nicely by a rather large bright blue butterfly floating past her rather closely. She jumps a bit at the sudden appearance.

Yuuka chuckles at the reaction, "They have a tendency to do that." She claims. "Go, explore a bit. Just don't destroy anything."

Takara nods her head and wanders off rather hastily, leaving Yuuka to herself. She walks right back out the front door and sits down in a chair on the front porch.

She sits back and watches the scenery of the giant flower garden for the next couple hours. Eventually, something catches her attention: the faint sound of a violin playing. She smiles and enjoys the sound, not caring from where or who it is coming from. It plays on for a while before stopping suddenly and without much of an outro. Yuuka stands up and scans the area for something out of the ordinary that might have caused the stop. Listening, still listening, she hears the faint clammer of humans in the distance. She scowls and sits back down with a sigh, awaiting their arrival. Sure enough, no longer than ten minutes later, a small party of armed humans come marching up to Yuuka's front door; they look angry.

"Youkai!" One male calls out to her. Yuuka simply approaches the steps and looks down on them with her previous scowl. "You have something that we want!" he states.

"I may. Regardless of what it is, I won't let you have it, however." Yuuka informs them. She holds out her parasol, pointing strait at them.

They all stand staring at her for another minute, and then Takara comes running out of the mansion yelling, "Hey, hey! What's-" but she interrupts herself by looking at the villagers.

"THERE IT IS! FIRE!" One person screams out upon sighting the girl. Two men then pull out longbows and arm them, aiming strait at the poor little girl. In immediate response, Yuuka fires another giant beam at the men who are all caught in it directly. They lie on the ground, charred like the girl earlier was, but they don't seem to be completely unharmed. Yuuka jumps down after that and walks over to them slowly but surely. Most of the people attempt to back away as they hear the heavy steps of an angry Yuuka that rock even their minds. One, however, actually gets up and tries to draw his bow again, but Yuuka simply dashes towards him without word and grabs him by the throat, snapping the bow in half while doing so. She lifts him up above herself and stares at him with both disgust and pity.

"You picked the wrong day to arrive here, scum." She calmly but angrily says. She drops him and lets him hit the ground, then steps on him and starts to grind her boot into his chest. "**Beings like you don't deserve to live**." She then presses incredibly hard on him, then hears a loud **SNAP**. The man suddenly cries out and stops moving after another, almost silent pop, then a squish. Yuuka attempts to calm down and steps off of the completely still thing, then punts him as well, far off into the distance. The other humans back away slowly but eventually get up and begin to run in fear of her. Yuuka stares at the fleeing things and only turns around to face Takara, recomposing herself with visible effort.

As Yuuka approaches, Takara stares at her with a worried expression and asks, "Did you…kill him?"

Yuuka chuckles and answers, "I think so. The others will definitely be mad, but I'll see them fail."

"Others?" Takara says with her head tilted.

Yuuka answers her with a small sigh, "You may see them eventually. What was it you wanted, now?"

"Oh, I saw a thing fly through the window." Takara informs her.

"…Was it a large thing?" Yuuka asks, again not happy.

"A little bigger than me." Takara answers.

"Did it have antennae?" Yuuka continues to question her.

"Yeah!" Takara yells.

Without hesitation, Yuuka frustratedly marches into her house and screams, "NIGHTBUG!" As soon as she does so, a loud clamoring is heard up and to the left. Yuuka instinctively and quickly runs up a flight of stairs towards the sound. She follows the frantic crashing of someone trying to escape for a short time when a green-haired and incredibly ambiguous looking kid comes crashing through the wall. Yuuka instantly grabs the thing by its neck and slams it into the ground, making it skid across the plaid carpets for a few meters.

"That was really rough!" The ambiguous kid yells in a not-so-ambiguous but obviously feminine voice.

Yuuka ignores this and asks the thing with a stern tone, "How many times have I told you not to break into my house, **you damn pest**?"

The kid gulps and hesitates to speak, but it doesn't matter for Yuuka takes no stride in picking it up and throwing it at full force through the wall that it crashed through and out of the house altogether. She recomposes herself again and walks back to Takara, taking her sweet time with the distance.

When she finally arrives, she states matter-of-factly, "It's just a regular day!" with just the slightest hint of aggravation.

"Hey, what else is there to do?" Takara suddenly asks.

Yuuka, still smiling, just freezes in place with no direct answer. She suddenly realizes, "_I have absolutely no idea what children like to do._" So she just settles with answering, "Perhaps we should work on getting you home." Takara just smiles and nods, then grabs onto Yuuka. The two go a bit further into the mansion, finally arriving in a giant circular room that looks like the inside of a tree. In the center is a giant, also circular bed with pale pink covers. The surrounding dome-like walls are plastered with various vines among other things. Books can also be seen around the bed and piled around a desk at the end of the room opposite of the door. Above the bed and about the same diameter is a cylindrical glass skylight. The skylight brightens up the room quite a bit, and the parts that aren't are ominously and faintly lit by lanterns holding fireflies in them.

Yuuka turns to the little girl and asks, "You like it? Come, I have something that can help us." Takara follows slowly while staring at the odd scenery. Yuuka starts to look through the piles of books and around her desk and in it, itself. Takara sits on her bed and picks up a nearby notebook that appears to be lying on it. She opens it up and begins to skim through; it's full of handwriting that looks like it was scrawled on in a hurry. Though she can't actually read, she stares at the side drawings of various plants and flowers.

"Takara, come here." Yuuka calls to her. She jumps up and stumbles over to Yuuka who is sitting at her desk. Takara looks over her shoulder at one book with a title accompanied by a sketch of some sort that looks like an arch found at shrines. "I'll flip through the pages; you tell me when you see something that looks like where you live, OK?" Yuuka asks of her, shortly after starting to flip a bit slowly through the book. Apart from the old, parched pages, there are fairly vivid illustrations of different landscapes. One is an image of a dark forest place with a dirt path struck through and into it. Along the path and around the countless trees are what appear to be mushrooms. That, however, is all she can see before the page is flipped. Another is of a giant lake with an oversized mansion on its edge and in the distance, a giant mountain covered in fog. Another is on the border of a wide, seemingly endless forest of bamboo shoots that reach far into the sky. A few pages later, Yuuka suddenly skips one illustration that is flushed with yellow and green and continues forth.

"Hey, you missed one, go back!" Takara yells at her.

"I didn't, that was just a stain." Yuuka tells her, very obviously lying.

"No, go back!" Takara demands.

Yuuka sighs and turns back to the skipped page, it's an overhead shot of a giant field of yellow flowers with some big object in the middle.

"Is this where we are?" Takara asks. Yuuka nods and keeps flipping through to no avail; the girl just doesn't seem to know where she lived.

Yuuka grows tired of keeping this up and asks, "Do you even remember where you came from?" Takara says nothing and backs away. "Don't you?" She asks again. No answer again, so Yuuka sighs and closes the book proclaiming, "You're hopeless…"

After a minute of sitting/standing quietly, Yuuka stands up and says, "There's someone else coming. Stay here." She marches out of the room and through the various halls with her parasol in hand and a bit of an unhappy look.

Reaching the front door finally, she finds another group of humans standing at her doorstep, but this time with no weapons and a surprising character: Reimu Hakurei, the "friendly" next door shrine maiden in red and white.

Yuuka bursts through the front door, groaning tiredly, "_What is it now!?_" she yells.

Reimu steps forward and yells back at her with her miko stick pointed at her, "We're here to stop your nefarious plans, evil green-haired woman! Unhand the girl in your possession and you shall not suffer our wrath!"

Yuuka smirks and just about blows a vein, "So where did you get that annoying speech? I think you're watching too much TV."

"…The hell's 'TV'?" She asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Never mind, what exactly are you things here for?" Yuuka dismisses the comment and asks.

One villager steps forward, "A child ran into this field, she belongs to us! Are you saying you haven't seen her?"

Yuuka sighs yet again, then says, "One moment." and goes back into her mansion. After a few minutes, Yuuka comes back out with Takara at her side, clutching her dress. "Is this what you want?" Yuuka asks the people.

"Yes, that's her!" One villager yells out, among the others who look relieved. They all attempt to gather around Takara and Yuuka, but the latter staves them off with her parasol.

"Girl," Yuuka looks down at her with one eye closed and begins to ask "do you know these people?"

Takara nods at her, then lets go of her dress, and Yuuka steps back a few. The humans cheerily gather around her and everyone looks rather happy. That is, until a scream is heard nearby. Everyone looks off in the direction opposite of the mansion to see a human woman running towards them.

Reimu stops the woman and shakes her a bit while yelling, "What is your problem!?"

"A body! I saw a corpse!" The woman immediately answers.

Reimu suddenly looks shocked at Yuuka, who stares back and smiles with some sort of sick happiness. "You…" Reimu starts "did you…?"

Yuuka just gives a tilt of her head and admits, "I knew I'd get in trouble for this, but I'll just beat you down if need be." She then threatens with a slight frown and half-closed eyes "Are we going to have to do that?"

Reimu is stuck in place, thinking the situation through, "_I don't know how, but she seems stronger than usual…I don't like this atmosphere._"

Finally, she just backs off and calls out to the others, "You guys got what you came for; let's just get out of here." With that, they leave peacefully.

Yuuka is left alone on the porch, and eventually says to herself, "There goes another…" before heading back inside.


End file.
